Blogs
Fri, 18 Jun 2010
Behind the scenes at the Horizon Fitness GP
By Helen Wyman - Horizon Fitness Racing Team
As a bicycle rider, we don't always have the opportunity to meet the next generation of us; those children who might just see or hear something that makes them think that bike riding is something they can do as they get older. Perhaps bike riding is not just a faster way to get to school or to their friend's house, and that maybe what we do is actually pretty exciting.
On the morning of the race we actually got that chance and met some great school kids who turned out to be pretty inspiring themselves. We started the day by meeting eight school children who had taken part in a new initiative to get more children riding to school. They had made it a competition between the classes to see how many miles they could accumulate between them. By making it a competition, the local school had increased the percentage of children riding to school from 2% to 19%.
Having spent the early morning chatting to the kids and tasing a local delicacy - Staffordshire oatcakes - we then moved onto a small theatre in the centre of the town to hand out medals to representatives from all the local schools who had participated in the cycle-to-school scheme. After handing out the medals - with the Stoke-on-Trent fox mascot on hand - we had to choose a child each to win a prize and have pictures taken with us. Me and Penny both chose the same very cute little girl - oops!
After this we then had a number of interviews with local media and Tour Series press. It's always a little bit scary doing television interviews as there are so many things to think about, but this was definitely made more intimidating by the fifty or so school children watching our every move. Most of the girls had an interview, including our Dutch rider Britt - who can speak really good English, but still needed a little bit of reassurance that she was answering the right question and nothing was lost in translation.
Thankfully, as there were so many people from Horizon Fitness and from the team making sure everyone was in the right place at the right time, with everything they could ever want or need, the whole morning went without a hitch - leaving us plenty of time to make the final preparations for the race. The team rode amazingly well in the race, and everybody showed how well-drilled the Horizon Fitness team is to take six of the top ten placings, including the win - obviously.
It was really amazing to see how many people were watching the races on a normal weekday, including so many small children with their parents. It reminds me of when I was a child watching the Tour of Britain thinking 'I want to do that one day.' If only one of those children we met gets inspired in the same way I did, then the team will have achieved something amazing.